By Robert Scott

All writers in Op Ed are here to inform and acknowledge issues of importance to our communities, however these writings represent the views and opinions of the authors and not necessarily of The Advertiser.

In researching material for this week’s OpEd, I checked what I had written last year at
this time. It was an article highlighting the organization VoteVets (website
https://www.votevets.org) and its head, retired Army Major General Paul Eaton. MGen Eaton
has written another compelling article this week, and it highlights the fall of another republic:
ancient Rome, as it transitioned from having been a democracy for almost 700 years to a
military dictatorship.
Here is some background. The Roman Republic was the world’s leading military power
for several generations, extending control of its elected Senatorial government over the entire
Mediterranean world from Spain and Morocco on the west to Syria and Egypt on the east.
Roman armies were stationed across the area, and the control of the Senate over the military
was based on one caveat: the Roman army could not enter the home territory of Italy and
occupy Roman cities. By 50 BCE, Julius Caesar controlled the province of Gaul: not only present-
day France but also what are now the Low Countries, western Germany, Switzerland, and
northern Italy. The boundary between Gaul and the Roman homeland was a small stream, the
Rubicon. Bringing an army into that homeland was illegal, but with his army behind him Caesar
announced he wished for the Senate to make him the dictator. Dictator was an infrequently
used Roman title, authorized by the Senate for a limited time when they thought dictatorial
powers were needed due to a national emergency. This time, though, the Senate refused.
Caesar’s response in January, 49 BCE, was to commit treason: he led his army against the
Senatorial government by crossing the Rubicon. Neither Caesar nor the Senate could know how
this would turn out. Crossing the Rubicon has become shorthand for taking a profound political
gamble, usually an illegal one, and then seeing how it plays out.
This year, our American Republic has a leader who has not learned this lesson from the
history of a democracy that fell just over 2000 years ago. Just as Rome had a law against
allowing military forces to be deployed within its own cities, the United States has the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878. As MGen Eaton points out, this law “draws a clear line between
domestic law enforcement and the Military, and prohibits the use of federal military forces for
domestic law enforcement – except by acts of Congress.” Just as Caesar did not wait for his
Senate to act, President Trump has now crossed his own Rubicon by deploying military forces
into American cities without an enabling act of Congress.
History shows what happened next. Caesar’s gamble did not pay off either for himself or
for democracy. The latter was doomed when the Senate ratified his act after the fact, and the
historic Republic of Rome devolved into a long-lasting dictatorship. Caesar himself did not live
to see how it turned out, as he was killed by his political enemies on the Senate floor five years
later, unleashing a 13-year civil war between those who had supported Caesar and those who
opposed him. We can but hope that neither of these outcomes is repeated this time.